Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

The absence of early-warning capabilities, the poor communications, and the lack of any succession plan at NATO posed a grave, immediate risk. “Not only could we initiate a war, through mistakes in Europe,” McNamara was told, “but we could conceivably precipitate Soviet preemptive action because of a loose C & C [command and control] in Europe.” The situation was made even more dangerous by the predelegation authority that Eisenhower had secretly granted to the military. NATO units under attack were permitted to use their nuclear weapons, without awaiting presidential approval. The new national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, succinctly explained the rules to President Kennedy: “A subordinate commander faced with a substantial Russian military action could start the thermonuclear holocaust on his own initiative if he could not reach you (by failure of the communication at either end of the line).”

Any use of nuclear weapons in Europe, McNamara now believed, would quickly escalate to an all-out war. And the more he learned about America’s nuclear deployments in Europe, the more he worried about such a catastrophe. Three weeks after the Goldsboro accident, Congress’s Joint Committee on Atomic Energy sent Kennedy and McNamara a top secret report, based on a recent tour of NATO bases. It warned that the risk of an accidental or unauthorized nuclear detonation in Europe was unacceptably high — not just in wartime, but also during routine NATO maneuvers. NATO’s command-and-control problems were so bad, the bipartisan committee found, that in many respects the United States no longer had custody of its own nuclear weapons. Within months the NATO stockpile would include atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, thermonuclear warheads, nuclear artillery shells, nuclear depth charges, nuclear land mines, and the Davy Crockett, a recoilless rifle, carried like a bazooka by an infantryman, that fired small nuclear projectiles. But none of these weapons, except the land mines — formally known as Atomic Demolition Munitions — had any sort of lock to prevent somebody from setting them off without permission. And the three-digit mechanical locks on the land mines, like those often found on gym lockers, were easy to pick. According to one adviser, when Secretary of Defense McNamara heard that hundreds of American nuclear weapons stored in Europe were poorly guarded, vulnerable to theft, and unlocked, “he almost fell out of his chair.”

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The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy had been concerned for almost a year that NATO’s custody arrangements were inadequate — and in violation of American law. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 strictly prohibited the transfer of nuclear weapons, as well as classified information about them, to foreign countries. The act was amended in 1954 so that NATO forces could be trained to use tactical weapons. After the launch of Sputnik, President Eisenhower asked Congress to change the law again and allow the creation of a NATO atomic stockpile. “I have always been of the belief that we should not deny to our allies,” Eisenhower said, “what your potential enemy already has.” His proposal was opposed by many in Congress, who feared that it might be difficult to retain American control of nuclear weapons based in Europe. The Soviet Union strongly opposed the idea, too. Hatreds inspired by the Second World War still lingered — and the Soviets were especially upset by the prospect of German troops armed with nuclear weapons. In order to gain congressional approval, the Eisenhower administration promised that the weapons would remain, at all times, under the supervision of American military personnel. The nuclear cores would be held by the United States until the outbreak of war, and then the cores would be handed over to NATO forces. Secretary of State Christian A. Herter assured the Soviet Union that “an essential element” of the NATO stockpile would be that “custody of atomic warheads remains exclusively with the United States.”